Vantaggi
Large workforce, plenty of opportunities for training & development. Broadly pleasant community. Decent ancillary benefits packages (pension / health etc.). Plenty of informal opportunities & projects to get involved in. Decent development opportunities from graduate to mid-senior positions, since turnaround is moderate. Departmental budgets are reasonable so it's unusual to have purchasing requests outright rejected for non-capital projects.
Svantaggi
Pay is mediocre given the breadth of responsibility of many of the mid-senior roles, IT systems and a lot of projects are vastly under-resourced. There are a lot of global 'top-down' influences on local processes which slow down local working practices a lot. Opportunities to penetrate into more senior management positions are limited as many posts are occupied by figures with >20years experience in the sector who have no intention of moving on. As part of the aerospace supply chain, the pace of change in working practices is often glacial & many processes suffer from high degrees of bureaucracy.